Introducing the Cards

The NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB GDDR5

From the outset, the new GeForce GTX 560 Ti looks remarkably similar to the older GeForce GTX 460, except that it is a tad longer. It uses the same cooler as the one seen on the GeForce GTX 460, but with a few enhancements. It gets a larger heatsink and an additional copper heat pipe to draw heat even more quickly away from the GPU core. Since it is a reference card, it also sports reference clock speeds, which means 822MHz at the core, 1644MHz at the shaders and 4008MHz at the memory.

The ASUS ENGTX560 Ti DCII TOP

As its name implies, the this card is packing ASUS’ new DirectCU II technology cooler, which has twin cooling fans, and flattened copper heat pipes which are in direct contact with the GPU core for quicker heat dissipation. The card also comes with ASUS’ new Super Alloy Power suite of enhanced components, such as Super Alloy Capacitors for a higher voltage threshold and improved overclocking potential.

To top things off, the card is also factory overclocked at a heady 900MHz at the core, 1800MHz at the shaders and 4200MHz DDR at the memory, which should make it run faster than NVIDIA's reference one.

The Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic

Admirably, Palit has given us a custom edition GeForce GTX 560 Ti on the day of launch and this is the Palit GeForce GTX 560 Ti Sonic. As its name implies, it is factory overclocked at 900MHz at the core, 1800MHz at the shaders, and 4200MHz DDR at the memory - similar to the ASUS card above. Faster clock speeds aside, it is also slightly more compact, and yet it sports a dual-fan cooler, which should help keep the card running cool.